Doubly invisible: Anna Larpent, domestic censorship, and the translation of performance cultures in Georgian Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on censored manuscripts and personal writing, the article uncovers the invisible role played by Anna Larpent, the wife of John Larpent (Royal Theatre Censor 1777–1824), in shaping foreign drama and opera in Georgian Britain. Anna's journals demonstrate that, as a more attentive theatregoer and critic than her husband, she took on many aspects of the role of reviser and curator of the submitted plays and became an important mediator between European performance cultures and Georgian audiences. The article explores the complex and contradictory role played by Larpent as an “agent of translation” selecting and censoring European performance cultures throughout this period and introduces the notion of “domestic censorship” to give visibility to the labour and agency of women. In doing so, it highlights the value of archives of life writing in providing empirical evidence of the wide range of agents involved in shaping the translation of performance cultures.